


Miya Atsumu and Oikawa Tooru Get Stuck In An Elevator Together

by birdcat



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Future Fic, M/M, author cannot believe it either that this thing exists, yes you are reading the title correctly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23338393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdcat/pseuds/birdcat
Summary: It is not often that Oikawa Tooru finds himself entirely helpless. Being trapped in an elevator is something he could deal with, he thinks; being trapped in an elevator thirty minutes before Olympic tryouts, even, is something he could deal with; being trapped in an elevator thirty minutes before Olympic tryouts with“Miya Atsumu”can surely be nothing other than some morbidly-timed divine retribution for crimes he must have committed in a past life.(Miya Atsumu and Oikawa Tooru get stuck in an elevator together. Oikawa Tooru hates it until he doesn't.)
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 62
Kudos: 849





	Miya Atsumu and Oikawa Tooru Get Stuck In An Elevator Together

_~~~_

_8:22 A.M._

The zipper on Oikawa’s jacket is broken. Somewhere between the embroidered logo on the right breast and the bulge of fabric beneath the pocket, there’s a dent in the zipper’s teeth. He’d spastically drawn the zipper over this bump over and over again on the walk from the hotel to the training complex, listening to the _Zzt-Zzt_ rhythm of it getting stuck and unstuck. He’d paced it with his own footsteps, which he’d counted--all one-hundred-and-twenty-three of them--from the hotel parking lot to the sliding doors of the training center. He had then decided that counting was boring and not helping and that he was giving up. Registration was on the fourth floor, he’d remembered. He’d coursed through the lobby, zipper flying up and down. _Zip. Unzip. Zip. Unzip._

Now the zipper is _permanently_ unstuck. The little metal tab swings from the bottom of the zipper’s column in pitiful defeat. It no longer grips when he tries to shove the other side of the zipper’s teeth into it, staring back at him instead in an indifferent and chipping shade of blue. He’s standing in an elevator, punching the button for _4_ with his elbow and trying to cram it in there for the twentieth time. A stream of information runs through his head: _Registration is on the fourth floor above the south entrance. 8:30. Warm-ups 9:00, first floor south gym._ The number on the elevator’s overhead display ticks up by one. The guy next to him is tapping his fingers against the wall in an unsteady rhythm. The zipper’s tab sinks down again stubbornly. Oikawa frowns.

The first day of preliminary tryouts for the Japanese Men’s Volleyball 2020 Olympic team is taking place exactly 72 hours after Oikawa Tooru got the email from his coach that he’d been selected as a candidate. The subject line had shone dark black at the top of his email inbox, early in the morning, two simple words: _MADE IT._ Oikawa, who’d blinked at those words in half-sleep for several moments before getting it through his thick skull what they meant, had nearly launched himself from his bed onto the floor.

That wouldn’t have been good; he had a lamp and three unpacked boxes on the floor beside his crooked box frame. Iwaizumi had told him to unpack them three weeks ago. He did it, then, that morning, post-email, in a state of near-euphoric mania. He put the lamp on the desk in the corner. Three more pairs of shoes in the closet. A set of dishware he didn’t remember buying was set ceremoniously in the cabinet. The bare apartment suddenly seemed a thousand times brighter. Oikawa had then called his mom from his now-clear bedroom floor: _Made it, mom._

He’s been in Japan for three weeks since returning from Argentina. He and his coach had decided it best that he come back exactly then, right after his final season with his Argentinian team came to an end, and with just enough time to plow through the mountain of paperwork and administrative hoop-jumping required to apply for Olympic tryouts. Proof of citizenship. Proof of residence. Coaches’ references. Official health forms. Hours and hours of gameplay footage. One twenty-four-year-old Oikawa Tooru with two feet on the ground on this side of the Pacific.

It was weird, at first, to come back. Japanese air tastes different, somehow. It’s a taste he ought to be familiar with, he thinks, some unspecific ever-present chill that sits against the roof of his mouth. It ought to be the flavor of his childhood, of the air in his hometown, of the backyard courts that he learned to play on. Still, he finds himself shutting the windows of his new and very bare Tokyo apartment at night to keep the feeling out; it’s the kind of thing that was never present in Argentina, and the kind of thing, he thinks, that you never notice about a place until you leave and come back. Today, he’s standing in an elevator wearing his old sky-blue track jacket from his Argentinian team as some sort of armor against it. Armor that now has one great chink, Oikawa supposes, with a zipper that no longer zips. 

“Uhh.” The guy next to him in the elevator has stopped drumming his fingertips against the wall. He’s staring, instead, at the small display above the elevator’s double doors, which has gone blank.

“Hm?” Oikawa pauses too. The elevator has stopped, and the display is off, but the doors aren't opening. The lit-up buttons beside his elbow have gone dark. “Uh,” he says, parroting the other guy.

Several seconds of silence pass before either of them move. The elevator remains shut and still. The other guy then begins to repeatedly press the _open door_ button with the knuckle of his index finger. It clicks willingly, but doesn’t light up.

“It’s not working,” he announces, after a few moments. This does not deter him from trying, apparently; Oikawa watches as he begins to press the button only faster.

“No, it’s not.” Oikawa feels stupid saying this sentence, watching him press it. Oikawa flicks his eyes up to his face, which is squished in concentration. Or anger? Stupidity? This guy is clad in a black tracksuit, a matching overstuffed volleyball bag at his side. He’s Oikawa’s height or taller. Another one of the candidates. Oikawa flicks through possibilities in his mind--just tall enough to be a middle blocker, could also easily be an outside hitter, seemingly _not_ intelligent enough to be a setter--

Oh, his hair.

_Oh._

His hair hurts Oikawa, even just to look at, on some deep and fundamental level. His forehead is wrinkled in concentration as he stares at the unlit _open door_ button, now having stopped smashing it; this very forehead is crowned in a slightly yellow, heavily gelled mass of bleached hair that’s been contorted into a shape that Oikawa cannot begin to describe. His dark roots stick out on all sides. Oikawa cannot decide which would be worse: these roots as an intentional choice, or simply because this guy cannot be bothered to touch them up. What Oikawa is certain of, however, is that this hair makes him feel deeply sad. He runs a hand through his own hair reflexively, as if to make sure that whatever has happened over there has not, by some miracle, rubbed off on him. His hand does not encounter any hair gel. Oikawa breathes out.

“Are we stuck?” His question is flat, indignant, and his facial expression has begun to contort into a shape equally indescribable as that of his hair.

Oikawa looks back up at the elevator’s display, which remains blank. Regretfully, he presses the _open door_ button with his elbow. Nothing happens.

“I dunno,” Oikawa says. He is overcome with the same feeling of stupidity as before. As if he is becoming stupid. As if he is becoming the kind of person who uses hair gel. He catches his own hand spazzing at his side, and stills it. “Is there a call button?”

The other guy looks to him, and then back at the panel of buttons before him. His gaze is blank, Oikawa thinks, like a gazelle, or a very small dog. He hovers his finger over a red button with a telephone symbol on it. “I think so,” he says.

In a single stride, Oikawa is beside him, pressing a finger to the red call button and leaning in to put his ear near the speaker in the wall. The other guy steps out of the way abruptly. This is the first day of Olympic tryouts; stuck elevator be damned, he is not going to be late. If he has to call the front desk, or the fire department, or the cops in order to arrive on time, he will do it. If the guy beside him in this elevator is now looking at him funny, so be it.

The speaker buzzes loud in Oikawa’s ear. He flinches, and suddenly regrets the other guy’s gaze on him. He hears a crackling noise that sounds like someone picking up a receiver, and then silence.

“Hello?” Oikawa says. His own voice sounds foreign to him.

Another crackling noise, and then a male voice: “This is the police, what’s your emergency?”

Oikawa starts. He looks at the other guy, who’s mirroring his wide-eyed expression in an inadvertent act of solidarity. He didn’t expect the red call button on the elevator to ring the police. He glances at the button, and the chipping red text beside the unsteady finger jammed into it: _EMERGENCY CALLS._ Maybe he ought to have known.

“Uh,” Oikawa says. Is this an emergency? Should he have called the police? It certainly feels like one. The feeling of stupidity returns, for a third time, with even greater force. He screws up his eyebrows. “I’m stuck in an elevator.” The admission hurts him somehow, as if being stuck in an elevator has nothing to do with bad luck, and is a state only achieved by balking idiots, or people who deserve it. He, suddenly, does not want the police dispatcher to think of him as someone who deserves it.

“I don’t know why I’m stuck,” he adds, as if this might help his cause. He pictures the police dispatcher’s face. The feeling of stupidity swells in grand fashion.

“Okay. This line’s address is listed at the Yoyogi National Stadium Centre, is this your current location?”

Oikawa clears his throat. “Yes. Um. I’m in the south building.”

“And the elevator doors are not opening?”

“No,” Oikawa says.

“Are you stuck between floors?”

“I don’t know. Uh. Between the third and fourth, I think.”

The crackling noise returns. Oikawa thinks for a moment that the dispatcher has hung up, and feels his legs tighten. They release when his voice comes through again: “How long have you been stuck?”

Oikawa exchanges a glance with his companion. “I’ve been in here for a minute or so.”

The other guy has folded his arms and is now gazing pointedly, as if he’s offended at the use of the word _I_ and not _we_ . Oikawa leans in nearer to the speaker and begins to grasp for his broken zipper tab. He thinks back to the steady _Zzt-Zzt-Zzt_ noise of the zipper’s teeth that had guided him here, while he was still out in the parking lot, measuring up the size of the stadium against the swollen anxiety in his chest; before he stepped into this box with this person and this police dispatcher and somehow, by some stroke of terrible luck, cast the very image of _showing up_ to tryouts into doubt. Suddenly the swollen, anticipatory anxiety from before sounds appealing.

“Can I get your name?” Asks the dispatcher.

“Oikawa Tooru--”

“Miya Atsumu--”

They make furious eye contact.

The dispatcher’s line crackles. A brief silence. “What was that? There’s two of you?”

“Oikawa Tooru,” Oikawa says hurriedly, before he can ask himself what he’s trying to prove. He doesn’t break eye contact. The name _Miya Atsumu_ tumbles around in his head. Is that what a Miya Atsumu looks like? He studies his strong eyebrows and their angry furrow. He hadn’t had a name in mind for _hair gel,_ but _Miya Atsumu_ is somehow wrong.

“Miya Atsumu,” Miya Atsumu says. His hold on Oikawa’s gaze is unnaturally steady.

Their staring contest is interrupted when the dispatcher’s voice hisses through again. “Okay, I can send the fire department to your location. Simply stay put. You’re safe where you are. They should be there in about thirty minutes.”

 _Stay put._ Oikawa frowns. As if there’s any danger of him running off. “Thank you,” he says. The line goes dead.

“ _Thirty minutes_?” Atsumu has looked away from Oikawa to stare at the speaker in the wall in abject disbelief. His blank expression is now one of horror.

Oikawa straightens himself and pulls out his phone. He pauses, considers. It’s now 8:27. Registration is supposed to be from 8:30 to 9:00. With a bit of luck, they won’t even be late. He feels something release in his stomach. He’ll make it to the first round of warmups five, ten minutes late at worst. He pictures firefighters clad in heavy gear appearing, near-angelic, on the other side of the elevator doors. The image is a welcome one. The uncomfortable feeling from before--the panic, the sense of his own stupidity--has dissolved. “It’s 8:27 right now,” he begins, “That’s not that bad at all, actually. If we’re lucky, we’re going to make it to registration on time, and then we’ll be able—”

_“Why was I even born?”_

Oikawa barks a single laugh at this, turning to look at Atsumu, but his smile freezes when he sees the look on his face. This guy is dead serious. He’s slumped against the wall, now, already slid down halfway, staring out at the elevator’s opposite wall with his eyes completely glazed over, as if he can see straight through it. 

Oikawa nearly stammers. He stands there, unmoving, a hand spazzing at his side helplessly. “What?”

Atsumu is unresponsive until his rear meets the floor with a solid _plunk._ His legs flop out in front of him like limp noodles. “I said, _why was I even born._ ” He says this with exhaustion that reaches some existential level, as if the effort required to repeat it threatens to suck the last drops of life out of him. His eyes do not move from the far wall, or from the great void beyond it that he seems to be able to see into. He tips his head back to meet the fake wood paneling of the elevator’s wall. The way his over-gelled hair smushes against it reminds Oikawa of play-doh. “Thirty minutes?” He says. “ _Thirty minutes?_ ”

“Oh.” All of the little things Oikawa had grown to fear about “ _Miya Atsumu”_ in their five-minute journey together seem to have collected themselves in this very moment and presented their final verdict: he is, in fact, too fucking embarrassing to even look at.

“I see.” Oikawa forces this out in some strained and unfamiliar voice.

It is not often that Oikawa Tooru finds himself entirely helpless. The panic from before has announced its return, and he pushes it down; it brings with it the vague awareness that he has begun cycling through the stages of grief in some alarmingly fast feedback loop. The thought of making it to registration on time can no longer buoy him in the face of his next thirty minutes. Being trapped in an elevator is something he could deal with, he thinks; being trapped in an elevator thirty minutes before Olympic tryouts is something he could deal with as well, he thinks; being trapped in an elevator thirty minutes before Olympic tryouts with “ _Miya Atsumu”_ can surely be nothing other than some morbidly-timed divine retribution for crimes he must have committed in a past life.

Oikawa soon finds himself on the floor across from _Miya Atsumu_ , mirroring his look of horror.

“It’s only thirty minutes,” Oikawa manages to say, eventually, after several moments of formulating half-finished opening sentences. “We’re going to make it to warm-ups probably just a bit late. The fire department is coming in thirty minutes. It’s 8:27 right now. Registration closes at 9:00.” He is reminded of the way that he used to talk to his nephew when he was in primary school; slow, measured, entirely unrecognizable to himself. “We just have to explain to them what happened.” Oikawa falters when Atsumu’s expression does not shift.

“Mmph.”

“No one’s going to blame us for getting stuck in an elevator.” Oikawa says. He gestures vaguely with both hands. Atsumu’s expression does not shift. “It’s going to be fine.”

He gets the sense that he is talking to himself. That he is talking to himself the way that he used to talk to his nephew when he was in primary school; slow, measured, all-too recognisable to himself. “Listen,” he says. He looks up at the elevator’s indifferently blank display. He looks down at his phone. _8:28._ “It’s going to be _fine_.”

  
  


~~~

  
  


_8:37 A.M_

“So, Oikawa Tooru,” Atsumu is giving him a blank-eyed stare that seems to suggest that the two of them have nothing in common. 

“Hm?” Oikawa looks up from his phone after several seconds of staring at it in silence. He hadn’t been looking at anything important; his phone was open to his homescreen, which read _8:37_ ; they had been silent for the past nine minutes, diligently avoiding eye contact. 

He levels his gaze at Atsumu. He, still sitting across from Oikawa, appears to have emerged from his funk, if not from his corner of the elevator; he has shoved himself into it almost violently, as if in retaliation against the very idea of being in an elevator; as if his retreat onto the floor is some sacrificial act of protest that might make the elevator change its mind. His shoulders are shrugged up awkwardly against the walls. Part of Oikawa wants to make a sudden movement, just to see if he might flinch.

“What brings you to the Yoyogi National Stadium, exactly?”

Oikawa nearly snorts. He asks this as if Oikawa is dressed like some unassuming passerby, not a tracksuit-clad athlete on his way to registration burdened with a volleyball bag and a pair of Aisics. Oikawa gets the feeling that he is being fucked with.

“Tryouts,” Oikawa says. He hopes that this will make Atsumu feel stupid.

“Mm.” Atsumu nods, like this is of great interest. “Me too,” he says.

Oikawa, rather, feels stupid. He flounders in search of an answer before helplessly parroting Atsumu: “Mm.”

“Lots of candidates.”

“Oh?”

“At tryouts, I mean.”

“Ah.”

 _Lots of candidates?_ Is that some kind of warning? As if Oikawa wasn’t aware? He lifts his phone again. The homescreen delivers the difficult news: _8:38_.

Oikawa clears his throat. “I’m sure there are,” he says, in some pained tone of voice.

“Where are you from?”

Oikawa reaches deep down within himself to gather the energy to answer. “Miyagi.”

Atsumu nods again, as if this is of even greater interest. He has the look of someone taking precise mental notes. _Miyagi,_ Oikawa thinks, _as if that’s going to give you any idea of what kind of competition you’re up against._ “Where, exactly?” Atsumu asks.

“Near Sendai,” Oikawa offers, as consolation. The next words have to struggle to get out of him: “And you?”

“Hyōgo.”

Oikawa catches himself nodding the same way Atsumu did. He runs through everything he knows about the prefecture of Hyōgo, stupidly, as if _this_ might give him any idea of what kind of competition he’s up against. He falters when he realizes that he still doesn’t even know what position Atsumu plays. Maybe he’s not really competition at all; maybe he’s one of the hitters that Oikawa, with any luck, will be forced to adapt to. The thought curdles something in his stomach. Atsumu’s got a nondescript sort of athletic build, Oikawa considers, the kind of height and broad shoulders that never look out of place on the court regardless of position. This presents a disappointing truth: there is no way to differentiate a middle blocker from a setter or an outside hitter by looking at him. Oikawa’s face screws up, and the question fires out of him in helplessness: “What position do you play?”

Atsumu grins an infuriatingly bright grin, like he’s pleased that he’s gotten Oikawa to bite. “I’m a setter.”

“Ah.”

A pause.

Oikawa regrets the question, and immediately imagines a reality in which he did not ask the question, in which he did not have to sit with the knowledge that Atsumu was a setter; in which they passed by one another in this elevator in blissful silence; where his first real, forced meeting with _Miya Atsumu_ and his terrible hairstyle and the fact of his being a setter would take place on the court, where it belonged, and where he could out-set him and his gleaming grin into appropriate reverence, not in an eight-by-eight cube where the idiot with the bigger mouth seems certain to emerge victorious. Oikawa imagines the firefighters wrenching open the elevator’s doors fifteen minutes from now and finding one or the both of them dead.

Atsumu’s grin grows only wider when Oikawa remains silent, as if he knows. “And you?”

“Setter.”

“Ah,” Atsumu says, but it’s entirely different from Oikawa’s _“Ah.”_ It’s a pleased kind of _Ah,_ Oikawa thinks, heard only from cocksure individuals who suddenly feel as if they have an idea of what kind of Miyagi-born competition they’re up against. “What team do you play for?” Atsumu asks. He shows no sign of slowing down.

Oikawa’s toes curl in his shoes. “Hm?” he asks, floundering, just to make Atsumu repeat the question.

“I’ve never seen ‘ya in the V-League. What team do you play for?”

 _The V-League._ Atsumu is in the V-League. Like everyone else who’s going to be here, Oikawa thinks; he should have known. He might be the only candidate without a V-League jacket on. Oikawa double-takes, then, at the golden logo on Atsumu’s smushed-up track jacket.

“Wait, are you on the Black Jackals?”

Atsumu’s eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah,” he says. He straightens himself only slightly, to smooth out the gold-lettered MSBY on his jacket. He looks between it and Oikawa, suddenly clueless.

Oikawa is now wearing the cocksure grin of those who, _do_ , in fact, have an idea of what kind of competition they’re up against. He didn’t know the name or the face until now, but Shouyou has spoken to him with unbridled zeal about the members of the Black Jackals for the past two seasons, setter included. This is _Miya Atsumu,_ he thinks victoriously, starting setter for the MSBY Black Jackals, V-League Division I. He could set unbelievable quicks, Shouyou said, as fast as Kageyama, and his jokes were really funny, or something, but no one besides Shouyou thought so. Oikawa’s grin widens. This is _Miya Atsumu_ , he thinks, fast, unfunny, unknowingly and fatally betrayed by Hinata Shouyou.

“Why do you ask?” Atsumu’s eyebrows are contorted in obvious discomfort.

“Shouyou,” Oikawa says, like it’s a full explanation. He goes on when Atsumu frowns. “I know Hinata Shouyou. An old friend. We played against each other in high school. And I met him in Brazil a few years back. He’s told me about the Black Jackals.”

Oikawa imagines Atsumu’s following questions: _Hinata has talked about me? You played with Hinata in high school?_ But Atsumu discards all the other information he’s just been presented with to ask: “You played in _Brazil_ with Hinata?”

“Argentina, actually,” Oikawa says, shrugging. “But I ran into him in Brazil once. We were there for exhibition matches.” He reaches for the broken zipper on his jacket, and watches Atsumu scan the logo printed just above it. “That’s why you’ve never heard of me. I’ve played in the Argentinian equivalent of the V-League for the past five years. I moved back to Japan three weeks ago. For this.”

Atsumu nods again, but it’s not the performative nod from before; it’s the quiet nod of a man humbled. Oikawa tries to imagine the thoughts tumbling around in his head, and nearly balks when his next question is only three words: “Beach or indoor?”

“What?”

“Did you play beach volleyball or indoor volleyball. In Argentina.”

“Oh.” Oikawa laughs. “Indoor. I can’t—” He stops, looks at Atsumu like he’s stupid. “Do you think I would have made it to Olympic trials for indoor volleyball if I’d been playing beach volleyball this whole time?”

Atsumu looks at Oikawa like _he’s_ stupid. He straightens the MSBY logo on his chest before speaking. “Hinata did.”

Ah. Maybe he is stupid.

  
  


~~~

  
  


_8:41 A.M._

Oikawa opens his eyes. He checks his phone. _8:41._ Their third straight minute of silence. Their last conversation died out in some stilted exchange about Hinata and Brazil and the weather patterns in Argentina. Oikawa smiles.

He makes brief eye contact with a glassy-eyed Atsumu, who has, by some extraordinary feat of athleticism, jammed himself even further into the corner. He, like a gazelle or a small dog, does not say anything.

Oikawa shuts his eyes again.

  
  


~~~ 

_8:42 A.M._

Atsumu has produced a water bottle from his overstuffed volleyball bag, which sits between his legs. He unscrews the lid. “Do ‘ya want some?”

Oikawa opens his eyes. He checks his phone. _8:42_. He shuts his eyes. “No.”

“Okay.”

~~~

  
  


_8:45 A.M._

“Do ‘ya have gum?”

Oikawa is laying on the floor with his hands folded over his stomach. The elevator carpet smells stale. He chews his gum. “No.”

“Okay.”

  
  


~~~

_8:55 A.M._

“Have you heard of Kageyama Tobio?” 

Oikawa nearly chokes.

This is not how he had imagined Atumu would break the silence. For the past ten minutes, they had been playing some game of wordless non-conversational footsie, with Oikawa sitting up again and Atsumu still in his corner. Each of them had been not-daring the other to speak; the tools of this game were sideward glances, the shifting of a leg from a bent to a non-bent position, the carefully-timed shutting of one’s eyes in order to present oneself as deep in thought or meditation, occupied in some other sphere that transcends the material barriers of stopped elevators or gawking elevator companions.

Oikawa had decided from the beginning that he was not going to break the silence; he had imagined that Atsumu might, since it seemed that this was his habit. The question _“Have you heard of Kageyama Tobio?”_ is not one that he had prepared himself for. Atsumu had said it quietly, as if Kageyama Tobio’s name were some carefully guarded secret; as if Kageyama Tobio were listening in from the air vent and could at any moment spring upon them in attack.

Oikawa laughs obnoxiously at the image. He pictures Tobio’s awkward height, the blank look on his face, falling into the space in the elevator between them. He hears his clueless monotone: “ _Oikawa-san?”_

 _Bring him in here,_ Oikawa thinks. _At this point, it can’t get worse._

He pauses, then, at the sudden realization that he would actually rather be stuck in this elevator with Kageyama Tobio than with _hair gel_. This makes him laugh harder. He wonders where Tobio is, exactly. He’s bound to be here at tryouts already, wandering around the sport complex, doing some intricate series of warm-up exercises in preparation to defend his position on the Olympic roster from the two balking idiots now stuck together between floors three and four of the south office.

Oikawa, through his own laughter, snaps back into presence at the sight of Atsumu’s unimpressed look: the dumb expression of someone unaware that Kageyama Tobio of all people would most certainly be a better elevator companion than him. This makes him laugh even harder. The question repeats itself in Oikawa’s head-- _Have you heard of Kageyama Tobio?_ He studies Atsumu’s face. No, scratch that: that is the dumb expression of someone unaware of just _how much_ Oikawa Tooru has heard about Kageyama Tobio.

“What?” Atsumu finally chokes out. He seems to be trying very hard not to look startled.

Oikawa tests the words, pictures Atsumu’s frown twisting into shock: _Have I heard of Kageyama Tobio? I’m the one who taught him to serve like that._ No, that’s too much. The terror Tobio let loose at his first-year Nationals with his precociously strong jump serve was, for example, to Oikawa’s credit, but it would be an overstep to somehow lay claim to the five subsequent aces against France.

Oikawa smiles a slow, careful smile. “Have I heard of Kageyama Tobio?” He lets the question sit in the air for an indulgently long moment. “I’ve known him since he was ten.”

He watches victoriously as Atsumu’s frowning expression undergoes yet another complicated transformation, first into confusion, then into horror, then into spite. “I see,” Atsumu manages. “You know, I thought—”

Oikawa cuts him off. “We went to the same elementary and middle school. He was my kouhai, two years under me. He learned to jump serve by watching me.”

They sit in silence for a moment before Atsumu speaks: “ _Oh?_ ” He seems uninterested in the fact that he’d just been interrupted; the curl of his lips is now asking Oikawa to keep talking.

Oikawa tips his head back until it meets the elevator’s wall. He looks down his nose at Atsumu. “He grew up watching me set, too. He did his first jump serve at age eleven.” He then stops and asks himself for a moment, struck with a sense of irony, why he’s even engaging with this; why he’s letting someone with that much gel in his hair rope him into some sort of standoff where the measure of victory is _proximity to Kageyama Tobio._ For all he cares, hair gel can have some of his proximity to Kageyama Tobio. Hell, he can have _all_ of his proximity to Kageyama Tobio, if he’s so pitifully desperate for it. Why is proximity to Kageyama Tobio so important?

Ah. Oikawa can think of a few reasons why proximity to Kageyama Tobio might be important. A few reasons that became very clear the moment the 2016 Olympic roster was announced, and Oikawa, despite intentionally avoiding the news, immediately got word of it from his snickering Argentinean teammates. There were other deeper reasons, too, which evidenced themselves in Oikawa’s mere _being_ in Argentina at the time--the shameful but ever-glaring need to have perhaps a little _less_ proximity to Kageyama Tobio.

Oikawa catches himself smiling. It’s a rueful, private kind of smile, one that he knows Atsumu will look at and struggle to read. Screw it, if Atsumu wants to play _proximity to Kageyama Tobio_ , who’s he to deny him the loss? “We played against each other in my third year of high school. I could teach him to serve, sure, but in the end, I couldn’t teach him to serve better than me.”

He almost expects Atsumu to come out with another barbed “ _Oh?”_ , but the next thing he says is quiet and calculated.

“So you were from the same prefecture, but you weren’t on the same team in high school, then?” Atsumu’s gaze has taken on something dark, while Oikawa wasn’t paying attention.

Oikawa catches himself hesitating to respond. “No, we weren’t.” Why does Atsumu even need to ask this question? They’d discussed this before, Oikawa had played against Hinata in high school, and by proxy Kageyama. Hell, Atsumu himself had played against Karasuno, for two years, at--

“So _that’s_ why you were never at nationals.”

It is dead silent in the elevator.

Oikawa feels something cold drop in his stomach. Atsumu’s expression is contorting in open delight. 

Oikawa musters his every ounce of strength to spit out his next words: “No, I suppose not.” He forces down a megawatt fucking grin. He will not stoop to this level. He will not stoop to _hair gel_ ’s level or his childlike glee at taunting a grown man about a high school volleyball tournament. This is seven, eight years ago that they’re talking about; Oikawa didn’t spend half a decade training halfway across the world to come back and let some helplessly insecure man-baby in an elevator get him to start caring about the two-thousand-and-thirteen Spring High qualifiers. He is too much of an _adult_ to engage with someone who collapses into a dysfunctional puddle when presented with the possibility of being _late_ somwhere and is so deeply insecure that he feels the need to start and subsequently _lose_ a dick-measuring contest where victory is determined by proximity to _Kageyama_ fucking _Tobio._

And yet Oikawa is just a man, and cannot stop himself. “It’s really a shame that I never made it to nationals. Such a _pity_ to think that we could have gotten to know each other _that much sooner_.”

Then, something in Atsumu’s expression shifts. Now _that_ is pity, Oikawa thinks. The small-minded pity of someone who went to nationals seven years ago and has nothing else going for him, and therefore clings onto that one victory as if his very life depends on it—

“He’s really good.”

The elevator sits in silence once again.

“What.” The word comes out of Oikawa entirely flat.

“He’s really good, I mean. Kageyama.” The sadistic delight in Atsumu’s expression is gone. He shrugs once, staring at Oikawa with something blank in his gaze. That’s not pity, Oikawa thinks, that’s. . . sobriety?

Oikawa is halfway through performing the mental gymnastics required to assume that _Miya Atsumu_ is capable of sobriety, when Atsumu opens his mouth again:

“I’m not joking. I guess I’m just saying. There’s no shame in losing to him. He’s really good.”

Oikawa nearly balks at the word _joking_ but catches himself just in time. He stops, plays Atsumu’s words in his head again, and forces himself to reconsider. _There’s no shame in losing to him. He’s really good._ Oikawa remains silent.

Oikawa reassesses: his thought that Atsumu doesn’t have anything else going on for him aside from his stints at high school nationals is most definitely unfair, he privately admits; he’s sharing the stuffy air in this elevator with him because they both qualified for Olympic tryouts. Hell, Atsumu probably brought up the name _Kageyama Tobio_ not out of some pitiful reverence for him, but simply because he _plays_ against Kageyama Tobio. The black-and-gold track jacket sitting bunched up around his shoulders belongs to one of the top teams in the V-League’s first division. He’s the starting setter for the Black Jackals, Oikawa recalls. Screw it, he probably brought up the name _Kageyama Tobio_ because he’s Hinata Shouyou’s teammate. Oikawa feels his brow draw together at the subsequent realization: he brought up the name _Kageyama Tobio_ because he has _beaten_ Kageyama Tobio.

The last thought stirs something uncomfortable in Oikawa’s stomach. If he remembers correctly, Shouyou told him that the Black Jackals had beaten Tobio’s team not just once or twice, but three times in the past two seasons. At the time, he’d responded to Shouyou’s text with an incomprehensible string of emojis and grinned victoriously at the mental image of shortie-pie dunking dinks over Tobio’s head, but now, the thought is twisted into something complicated. That was Hinata’s team. Which is Atsumu’s team. That was _man-baby hair-gel Miya Atsumu_ beating Tobio, too.

And being humble about it.

Oikawa’s next, rushed thought is that the Black Jackals defeating Tobio shouldn’t surprise him; that the V-League works that way, that Tobio’s team has certainly beaten the Black Jackals a few times in the past seasons, too, and that it’s nothing to place too much importance on; and yet, staring at Atsumu’s astoundingly sober expression, it _does_ seem like something to place importance on.

Oikawa can very easily imagine a Miya Atsumu that has beaten Kageyama Tobio going around and blabbing off about his victory, verbally tearing down Tobio’s publicly accepted title of _genius_ and frothing at the mouth at the opportunity to talk about the fact that he’d beaten him to an old high-school rival who, admittedly, had only ever lost to him.

And yet, just a sober look, and a genuine nod. _“There’s no shame in losing to him. He’s really good.”_

This is the measured assessment of an honest victor. Oikawa’s legs clench--of a _humble_ victor. Oikawa feels himself getting pissed off. If Miya Atsumu is capable of honesty, of _humility,_ in the face of victory over Kageyama Tobio, sitting across from someone who only loses to him, then god help Oikawa Tooru, _what the hell was all of this about?_

“Are ya’ gonna be good over there?” Atsumu, gawking and dumb once more, waves a hand in Oikawa’s direction. “Yer’ still in there, right?”

Oikawa blinks at him. He is aware of just how much this _ya’_ , this _yer’_ would have irritated him normally; now it seems utterly benign. Atsumu’s stare hasn’t changed: blank, curious, sincere. This _ya’_ business seems almost awkward, now, the forced affect of someone who feels the need to appear nonchalant.

Oikawa simply stares at Atsumu now, struggling against the sudden and overwhelming urge to _understand_ him. He feels himself getting pissed off again. He looks him up and down: Atsumu’s black-and-gold track jacket still sits awkwardly high on his shoulders, bunched up from when he’d slid down against the wall, the base of the hood now ridden up and digging into his chin. His posture, with his entire body slumped into the elevator’s corner, now seems childish, even innocent, marked with unawareness or disinterest in how absurd he looks. Atsumu’s fingers, which are taped and manicured as short as possible in the telltale custom of setters, tap against the carpet. Oikawa looks down at his own hand, which sits beside his right leg: fingers taped and manicured as short as possible, tapping against the carpet. The feeling in Oikawa’s chest does something unusual.

Oikawa is reminded of their shared purpose, here at Olympic tryouts, which presents an inescapable sort of unity that runs far deeper than their common misfortune in a broken elevator. Oikawa stares at Atsumu again, who stares back at him.

Oikawa grins, because he is staring at himself.

Atsumu matches Oikawa’s grin without hesitation. His is blinding. There’s a projected arrogance in that look, Oikawa thinks. Maybe the arrogance is really just the awareness of how blinding his grin is. The public arrogance of the knowingly handsome. Oikawa’s smile only widens. There’s that projected arrogance, Oikawa thinks, and then something quieter beneath it. 

Oikawa watches with a sense of dramatic irony as Atsumu begins to play with the zipper on his jacket. _Zip. Unzip. Zip. Unzip._ Oikawa nearly laughs. Forget the tapping, manicured fingers, maybe _this_ is the condition of setters, Oikawa thinks, to zip-unzip track jackets to their early deaths. Atsumu accelerates his zipper-zipping speed. _ZipUnzipZipUnzip._ It briefly gets caught, and he pouts like a child for a split second before he resumes.

Oikawa is helpless to do anything as the feeling in his chest blooms, then, into perhaps the most complicated thing of all: compassion.

 _ZztZztZztZzt._ Atsumu’s zip-unzipping has reached terminal velocity. Oikawa is reminded of his own sky-blue jacket, and the zipper tab that be broke this morning. His face feels warm.

“My zipper’s broken,” Oikawa says, then, all of a sudden.

The elevator is silent.

Because fuck it, apparently. Because that’s what normal people say, apparently, Oikawa thinks, when you can’t find anything to say, because the fellow Olympic hopeful sitting across from you on the floor of an elevator just looked you in the face and told you with extreme sincerity that there is no shame in losing to Kageyama Tobio; because he has begun tapping his fingers and zipping his track jacket in the same agitated way that you do, Oikawa thinks, and with these acts has swiftly obliterated the thought that he is somehow distant and incredibly unalike from you; suggesting, somehow, that he and his cocksure grin are a reminder of you, Oikawa thinks, that his barbed words are a defense for the same inner vulnerability that you know in yourself, that he toils under the same peculiar and excruciating yearning to play volleyball that has ruled your being for as long as you can remember. And, worst of all, that he might be in this way uniquely able to look at you and straight through you, into the deep well of desire encircled by your ribcage that is probably near-identical to his. That you, conversely, might be able to witness his as well.

That’s what normal people do in this situation, Oikawa thinks, they go beet red in the face and stare back at the person like a balking idiot and say: _“My zipper’s broken.”_ Apropos of _nothing._

“Oh.” Atsumu’s innocent look hasn’t changed in the slightest. His hand goes still with the zipper halfway down the jacket. He blinks once, smiles. It’s blinding.

“The zipper on your jacket? I can try an’ fix it.”

Oikawa feels a little bit like he is going to die.

~~~

_9:04 A.M._

Oikawa returned from Argentina three weeks ago with a great number of things in tow. He finds himself standing motionless in the middle of the elevator stuck between floors three and four of Yoyogi National Stadium Centre’s south building, staring at Miya Atsumu, making a mental list of them: A tan, for one; a new skincare routine; a scar on his elbow; a new treatment plan for his right knee; a permanent tweak in his wrist; two championship titles; thousands of game hours; approximately 10,000 words of Spanish vocabulary; approximately 5,000 words of English vocabulary; the ability to take care of himself; an Argentinean attitude towards naps; an invitation to Olympic trials; a taste for spicy food; a distaste for cold air.

One very evident thing: A sky-blue track jacket, now hugging Miya Atsumu’s shoulders.

Oikawa reviews how they arrived here: _“No, it would be way easier to fix it if I could put it on,”_ Atsumu had said, when Oikawa had spent several minutes of conversation evading the idea, and Oikawa, feeling a little bit like he was going to die and a lot like he had no choice, had peeled the jacket off of his shoulders and passed it to a steady-fingered Miya Atsumu. He’d watched, penduluming between abject horror and shameful interest as Atsumu’s Black Jackals jacket was abandoned, and the sky-blue material slid and stretched over his torso.

 _“Huh, fits a little tight around the shoulders,”_ Miya Atsumu had said, and Oikawa Tooru, watching how it fit a little tight around Miya Atsumu’s shoulders, hadn’t responded.

“One sec, I’m gonna get it.” Atsumu says, now. He has emerged heroically from his corner, and now stands with the collar pinched beneath his chin and every ounce of concentration focused on the stubborn sky-blue tab that wants nothing more than to swing from the bottom of the jacket in defeat. He is grinning a determined sort of grin. His fingers, which are taped, manicured, steady, tug against the zipper tab with some kind of assured expertise that Oikawa cannot seem to access.

“Mm.” Oikawa says. He is standing in the middle of the elevator dumbly, jacketless, feeling a little naked; standing as if rooted to the spot, as if incapable of motion, as if the slightest movement towards or away from Miya Atsumu and the sky-blue Argentinean track jacket that _fits a little tight around the shoulders_ might set off a hidden bomb, or make the elevator drop, or send a glassy-eyed Kageyama Tobio crashing down through the air vent, or worst of all, trigger the arrival of the firefighters destined to save them from their peril. 

Their peril, Oikawa thinks, catching Atsumu’s grin for a fleeting, blinding moment.

“Almost there,” Atsumu says. _I always busted the zippers on my brother’s jackets,_ he’d said earlier, running his fingertips over the zipper’s teeth with an inaccessible confidence in his eyes. _You just gotta re-align the tab. I promise ‘ya, it’ll take like a minute._ Oikawa had nodded and remained silent and tried to picture Miya Atsumu’s brother and studied the color of the jacket against Miya Atsumu’s skin, against his hair.

“Right,” Oikawa says, now. It comes out in some strained and foreign voice. He looks at his phone. _9:04._ “Right.” _Almost there._

“And—” Atsumu jerks the zipper up once, twice. He stops with it halfway up his chest, and then with another tug he stops with it all the way up to his chin, and Oikawa is nodding and remaining silent and studying the too-tight span of his old team’s logo across Miya Atsumu’s chest.

Atsumu looks up. He is grinning. It is blinding. “Done!” he announces.

“Fire Department!” Someone announces, with a bang, on the other side of the elevator door.

~~~

_9:07 A.M._

The jacket is returned to Oikawa. The fire department wrenches the elevator door open with some confusing and scary-looking tool. Miya Atsumu is pulled out. Oikawa Tooru is pulled out. One of the firemen is calling the front desk. They are informed that registration has been taken care of. They are told they’re only ten minutes late, and that this is fine. They are told where they need to go for warm-ups. They are parted in some great anti-climax. Oikawa zip-unzips the newly repaired zipper of his track jacket in time with each of his four-hundred-and-thirty-three steps towards the south gym, and tries not to picture the color of the jacket against Miya Atsumu’s skin.

~~~

_9:12 A.M._

Oikawa stands in the south gym’s empty locker room. He hears the noises of the other candidates through the door that leads to the gym. He is vaguely aware that he should get changed and head out there. His right hand is still steadily zipping and unzipping his jacket’s zipper, but his left hand is in the jacket’s pocket, curled around a slip of paper he’s just discovered in there and is too scared to pull out. He stands there with a sense of doom. He stands there with the sense that if he pulls the paper out, a hidden bomb will go off, or an elevator somewhere will drop, or a grinning Miya Atsumu will materialize before him and offer to put on the jacket again.

He Zzt-Zzts the zipper ten more times before pulling the slip of paper out. It’s a torn-off piece of a label from a water bottle. From the water bottle Atsumu had offered to him in the elevator. The sense of doom swells dramatically.

He flips it over. A phone number is scrawled onto the backside. Oikawa recognizes the Hyōgo area code.

Oikawa Zzt-Zzts the zipper. It breaks.

**Author's Note:**

> hehehehehehe
> 
> one day in early march my dumbass woke up and tweeted something like "fuck it. im giving up writing atsuhina. im writing atsumu and oikawa stuck in elevator fic. send tweet" and then, like, a large number of people were like "hahaha do it motherfucker" and in that moment at like 7 am in my bed i felt what faust must have felt in faust when he made a deal with mephisto because it was like an actual devil appeared before me in my bedroom with a flaming contract which i look upon in horror at the realization that i have already signed it. elevator fic was bound, by some evil law, in that moment, on twitter, to be written.
> 
> then midway through drafting i had to move from germany back to the united states on two days' notice due to the coronavirus pandemic. this jammed the elevator that is my life, so to speak. then i disappeared but now i am back and i am in business and the elevator fic prophecy has been fulfilled and i may finally rest.
> 
> and by the way my name is june and i am [summersugawara](twitter.com/summersugawara) on twitter, where i will be active again! classic thanks to elmo and bree and mai and everyone else on twitter who upvoted my elevator fic tweets and soul-bound me to create this monstrosity i hope you enjoy it (fingers pointing towards each other all shy-like emoji)
> 
> i often shed tears of joy in public bathrooms while reading nice comments. if you want to leave one, i will probably shed tears of joy in a public bathroom over it. (fingers pointing towards each other all shy-like emoji)
> 
> see you all on twitter hehe!


End file.
